Cyberbullying: What to Do If You Are Being Bullied Online
November 2024 marked the end of Cyberbullying Awareness Month, an annual awareness campaign to combat online bullying. In 2024, VK organized it for the sixth time, and for the first time extended it by a month to encourage more people to pay attention to the problem and join the project.
Ksenia Toporkova, Head of Sustainable Development at VK, discusses the scale of the problem, how it affects us all and, most importantly, what those who have experienced or witnessed online bullying should do about it.
Painful comments, ridicule, sarcastic and rude messages, publication of personal photos or, on the contrary, suddenly being blocked without explanation - many of us have experienced online aggression in one way or another. And that is why we know that even if those words have been texted by someone and not spoken out loud, if we have never actually heard them from someone we personally know, they still hurt just as much as in real life.
For six years now, we at VK have been trying to reduce, in the ideal case to stop, the flow of aggression on the Internet. We do this by studying cyberbullying from different angles and by running an annual information campaign. We don't just believe it, we prove it with our research: the more people know about the problem and how to solve it, the less aggression there will be online.
Our studies show that online bullying is a massive issue.
Imagine: one in three Internet users has had a cyberbullying victim experience. Simply put, literally anyone can be bullied online, and this is no exaggeration. We just may not notice that our family or friends are being bullied online right now.
Victims of cyberbullying experience a range of emotions: irritation and anger (58%), resentment (51%), depression (38%), fear and anxiety (33%), helplessness (33%) and confusion (28%). Moreover and in addition to negative feelings, around 70% of people experience sleep problems and headaches.
Another important point: we always look at the topic of cyberbullying from three sides - there is the position of a witness to the bullying, the position of the victim and the position of the aggressor. All participants in this situation suffer from it, and for each of them, together with experts from specialized charitable foundations and psychologists, we have compiled advice.
If you are a victim, the first advice is to block the offender. This is our main tool in the fight against cyber aggressors. Engaging in a dialogue, trying to prove your point, making excuses does not work. The aggressor will just get the reaction he or she needs from you and continue to bully. You should never take aggressive comments as reasonable criticism. Insults have nothing to do with the latter.
Second, complain. All social media and gaming platforms have a 'Complain' function. Take screenshots of insults, aggressive comments, distribution of personal information, and send complaints to the site administrators.
Whether knowingly or not you have become an aggressor yourself, the first step is to acknowledge your responsibility. Try to understand why you behaved the way you did. And most importantly, don't blame yourself for making this mistake. The most important thing is that now you have realized you were wrong, and you want to make it right.
And if you have witnessed cyberbullying affecting someone close to you, it is important to tell them about foundations and projects where specialized psychological support can be found. Correctly and without insisting tell them that there is no shame in asking for help. People who received professional support came out of a traumatic situation with less stress.
Online bullying faced by children and young people is another matter which is worth to be separately highlighted. If you are a parent, the first thing to do is to listen to your child, in no way minimizing the seriousness of what has happened; discuss his or her feelings, find out what actions have been taken to deal with the situation and if the child has already asked for help and from whom. Support and reassure your child, if necessary, consult a therapist or doctor. Talk to other parents and the teacher, arrange a meeting to discuss the situation.
In general, over the years of studying the cyberbullying problem, we have found that as a society we are all changing our attitude to this issue. Cyberbullying used to be regarded as something far away, a 'no big deal' problem, but now it is recognized as a real danger.
For example, while our initial research in 2019 showed that 76% of children didn't tell adults about bullying, we now see that already more than 50% of children discuss cyberbullying with their parents.
And one more important change in behavior on the Internet for us. Almost half of RuNet users now know about tools that can help them deal with an online aggressor. We think this is a big step forward. We really want to continue moving in this direction, uniting those for whom cyberbullying is unacceptable.